The Drowning Girls

I hesitated. Danielle was supposed to be there with me now, helping with the registration table. I’d planned to take her around to the various stations when the line was low, reintroducing her to staff members she’d met over the years. But last night Sonia had called, offering to take the girls to the mall for back-to-school shopping in the morning, then to registration in the afternoon. “It’s the least I can do,” she gushed. “You’ve been so generous with Kelsey all summer, and now that she’ll be carpooling with you...”

She was right. It was the least she could do. I’d planned to offer occasional rides to Kelsey, figuring I left too early each morning to make that an attractive offer. But Sonia had embraced the idea enthusiastically. It wasn’t until later that I wondered if she saw me as part of her support staff, one of the sprawling, faceless army of people who performed her menial tasks.

I brushed off this thought and told Aaron, “Danielle’s coming with a friend. One of the girls in our neighborhood is starting here, too.”

“This place is getting overrun with millionaires,” he quipped.

All afternoon, I found myself scanning the cafeteria for a sight of them, two leggy blonde models and my own knock-kneed, dark-haired daughter, trailing behind in her Converse. When they did arrive, I spotted Kelsey first—a sheaf of white-blond hair, cutoffs so short the pockets hung below the hem. Sonia was next to her, tall in a pair of heels that dented the floor varnish. But even then, it took me a minute to recognize Danielle next to them.

“What the...” I stood, craning to get a better look, and Danielle spotted me at the same time. Her cheeks were red.

“Don’t be mad,” she blurted, coming toward me. “There was this place in the mall—”

“Your hair,” I breathed. Since kindergarten, she’d worn it long—ponytails, a braid, a dark waterfall down the middle of her back. I’d shampooed it for her, picked carefully through the wet knots, brushed it in the mornings, snapped it into place with an elastic band. Sure, she hadn’t needed that help for years—but now that her hair was gone, I was sharply nostalgic for those mother-daughter tasks. Danielle’s hair hadn’t just been cut, it was cropped short, ending above her ears, fitting her head like a dark skullcap.

Next to me, Aaron whistled. “You know who you look like? Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.”

Danielle laughed. “Is that good?”

“Absolutely,” he said, leaning across the table to give her a quick hug. “Ready for high school?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Do you like it, Mom?”

I touched her hair tentatively, trying to find a piece long enough to tuck behind her ears. She looked lovely, striking—but in a surreal way, as if this wasn’t my fourteen-year-old daughter in front of me, but a grown, postcollege version of herself, home for a visit. I tried to keep my tone light, tried not to let the hurt seep through. “You didn’t tell me you wanted a haircut.”

“Well, Kelsey was getting hers cut anyway, and Mrs. Jorgensen offered...”

“Kelsey’s mom paid for this?”

“I know. I told her I had money, but she insisted...”

“How much are we talking?”

Danielle bit her lip. “Seventy-eight dollars.”

“Seventy-eight dollars!” I hissed.

Next to me, Aaron whistled.

Then Sonia was there, oohing and aahing over the cut, offering a faux apology as if she simply couldn’t help herself. “I mean, with these cheekbones,” she gushed, “she was practically a diamond in the rough.”

She was a diamond already, I seethed.

“You know what we should do tonight?” Kelsey asked. “We should try on all our clothes, and I could do your makeup.”

Danielle laughed. “I don’t know. I look funny with makeup.”

“Seriously, I’ll give you a whole new look.”

I had a sick feeling, as if I were on a roller coaster and the momentum was building and building, and the whole thing might just go off the tracks.

“Let me get you girls your class schedules,” Aaron said, bustling behind me, saving me from whatever ugly thing was going to come out of my mouth. He found Danielle’s schedule under the M’s, and then hesitated, looking at Kelsey. “What’s your last name?”

“Jorgensen,” Sonia said. “Kelsey.”

Aaron thumbed through a stack and handed Kelsey her schedule. She glanced at it, then asked, “So which of you is going to be my counselor?”

“Oh,” I said, realizing. “You’ll be mine. I have H through M.”

She smiled. “Cool.”

Danielle held up both papers, looking back and forth between them. I couldn’t stop staring at her, as if she were some kind of mythical creature, half girl, half woman. “Hey,” she said. “We have a class together! Geometry.”

“Oh, my God, you would be in advanced math,” Kelsey teased, and Danielle blushed.

Sonia glanced at her cell phone, noting the time. “What’s next here? Why don’t we get in line for ID photos while we can.”

Danielle gave me an uncertain wave. “Bye.”

“Yes, bye,” Kelsey chorused.

I slumped back into the plastic cafeteria chair, watching them walk away from me. The crowd seemed to part at Sonia’s approach, and more than a few heads turned. They were looking at Danielle, too, I realized.

Aaron helped the next people in line and then took a seat beside me. “She does look great, you know.”

“Of course she does,” I breathed.

“But that friend. Whew.” He shook his head. “I’m glad she’s one of yours. She looks like a pack of trouble.”

* * *

“She might have asked me,” I huffed to Phil that night. “I have a phone. Would it have been too difficult for her to call me, to at least mention the idea? Oh, by the way, Liz, we’re going to stop by a salon. Would you mind if I had Danielle’s hair hacked all the way back to her scalp?”

“You did say you liked it.”

I sighed. “That’s not the point.”

The girls were upstairs, in the beginning stages of what promised to be a marathon clothes-trying-on session. They were using the mirror in our walk-in closet, so Phil and I were banished to the back deck, where we were slowly working our way through a forty-four-dollar bottle of wine from Victor Mesbah, a just-because gift he’d dropped by the office. I was slowly burning through my anger, too.

Phil sighed. “It’s hair, Liz. It’s not like it’s a neck tattoo. And she does look cute.”

“Of course she looks cute,” I bristled. “She couldn’t not look cute.” But she’d been cute before, when she’d been so patently herself.

Phil’s voice was calm, his words nearly lapped up by the pool. “You’re probably going to have to let this go.” He was distancing himself, I thought, playing the role of the disengaged stepfather.

Earlier, driving home, the blades of the wind generators on the Altamont rotated so slowly, they might have been giant house fans, barely displacing the warm air. Now the grass by the fourteenth hole was fading into a purplish blue, and sunset had brought with it a slight chill. I pulled my knees to my chest. “She’s becoming one of them.”

Phil laughed. “Who?”

“You know. The pretty girls.”

He leaned over, emptying the bottle between our glasses. “What pretty girls?”

“Please. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Look at Deanna Sievert. Look at Sonia Jorgensen. Look at Kelsey, for goodness’ sake. Those pretty girls, the ones the world smiles on, the ones who get everything they want without even trying for it.”

“I haven’t noticed, particularly.” But his voice was distant, his gaze far away.

Liar. I took a large gulp, savoring the slow trickle of wine down my throat, and set the half-empty glass at my feet.

The night had been so quiet that the sound of a car starting still registered a few minutes later, an echoic memory. Out of the darkness came another sound, a strangled cry.

“What was that?” I sat up, thinking the worst—the girls upstairs, Fran Blevins home alone with Elijah.

He held up a hand, shushing me. We waited, and the sound came again—clearly a scream this time, its shrill edge piercing the night. Phil didn’t have to think, he was on his feet, heading for the door. I stood, toppling my glass, which shattered on the concrete.

“Shit.” I stooped to gather the shards.

“Leave it,” Phil called over his shoulder. “We’ll get it later.”

Inside, Danielle and Kelsey were at the top of the stairs, looking down on us. From this angle I could see straight up Danielle’s skirt, a tiny white thing that was a waste of money, no matter what she’d spent.

Phil charged through the kitchen to the garage.

“What’s going on?” Danielle demanded.

The garage door slammed and Phil was back, flicking a flashlight on-off, on-off to test the battery.

“We heard a noise,” I told them. “Just stay put. We’ll check it out.”

But Danielle had started down the steps, Kelsey trailing her in a skimpy baby-doll dress. “I’m coming, too,” Danielle said. “I want to go with you.”

“Right? That’s always how it is in horror movies. The killer comes upstairs, and there’s nowhere left to go at that point,” Kelsey put in.

“I’m sure there’s no—”

“Absolutely not,” Phil snapped. “You’re staying here. And put some clothes on, both of you.”

Danielle looked down at her legs, as if she were seeing them for the first time. Kelsey only smiled.

“Stay,” I ordered, as if they were disobedient pets. I followed Phil as he barreled down the front walkway, the beam of his flashlight bringing into stark relief the rounded humps of our landscaping rocks. I saw a dark figure standing in the middle of the road, and he spotted me, moving into the yellow glow of an overhead carriage light. He was tall, gray hair cropped close to his head, a button-down shirt tucked firmly into his waistband.

“Everything all right at your house?” he called.

“We’re fine. I guess you heard that, too?”

“Sounded like a scream.” He extended a hand. “I’m Doug Blevins.”

“Liz—Liz McGinnis. That’s my husband, Phil,” I gestured to Phil’s retreating form, a dark shadow preceded by the beam of his flashlight. “I’ve met your wife and son a few times.”

“That’s what I hear. Fran said it was nice to have another normal person around.”

I laughed. “I feel the same way.”

Again, the scream came. It was louder this time, and definitely female. I whirled around, trying to get a sense of its origin.

“That’s it,” Doug said, digging in his pocket. “Woman screaming? I’m calling the police.”

Phil was coming back from the clubhouse, his flashlight zigzagging toward us.

Doug took a step away, speaking into his phone. “Yes, I’m calling from The Palms. Alameda County, outside Livermore.”

“It’s not coming from the clubhouse,” Phil panted. “Everything’s shut up for the night.” He frowned at Doug Blevins, overhearing part of his conversation.

The scream became a breathy wail, carried by someone coming off the trail at a sprint. Footsteps pounded closer, and Phil stepped in front of me. “Who’s out there?” he called.

The running figure became first a woman, then Deanna Sievert in a fitted running tank and shorts, hair escaping her ponytail. Seeing us, she cried out again, more sob than scream this time.

“Deanna? What happened?” I called.

She stopped short in front of us, nearly collapsing. Phil caught her by the arm. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Her breath came in ragged gasps, and when she straightened up, her face was blotchy with tears. “There was—something—” she wheezed. “On the golf course. These two glowing eyes—”

“You saw someone out there?” I asked.

“No, something. At first—I thought it was someone’s dog. But the way it moved—it was feline, just massive—” She doubled over again, hands on her knees. Phil still had her by the arm, as if he were propping her up. “It disappeared when I screamed, and then I ran like hell.”

Doug joined us, phone in hand. “Police are sending out a patrol. I’m supposed to call back to update them. What did you see, exactly?”

Deanna repeated her story, only this time the predator seemed larger, stronger, faster, like the great fish that got away. She seemed less scared now, enjoying her position as the center of attention. I focused on Phil’s thumb, which was rotating in a circle on Deanna’s twenty-four-year-old shoulder.

Doug nodded knowingly. “Sounds like a mountain lion. We’ve had those before, off and on. The drought brings them out here to the golf course. They see all that green and think they’ve got a better chance of finding food.”

Headlights rounded the curve at the end of the block, blinding us with sudden light in the middle of the street. We didn’t move. It was a dark sedan, but it couldn’t have been the police, especially if they were coming down the winding access road from Livermore.

“Hey! It’s the Mesbahs.” Deanna waved to them, and Victor rolled down the window. He was wearing a tuxedo, a bow tie unclasped at his neck.

Myriam leaned across his body, alarmed. “What’s going on?”

Deanna called into the sedan, “I just saw a mountain lion on the trail!”

“My God.” Victor shifted the car into Park. Heat radiated from the engine.

“Well, we don’t actually know—” Phil tried.

Doug said, “The police are on their way. Actually, I need to call them back, give them an update.” He took a few steps away, redialing.

Myriam stepped out of the car, holding up the hem of a midnight blue dress, its fabric pooling near her ankles. “You must be so terrified,” she said. Deanna collapsed immediately against her shoulder.

“You don’t want to mess around with mountain lions,” Victor boomed in his too-loud voice, as if he were educating all of us, everyone in The Palms. “Have you ever seen a mountain lion going after something? They’re just stupendous creatures.”

“My God, yes,” Myriam said, patting Deanna’s head. “They can just tear something from limb to limb.”

No one seemed to be listening to Phil, but he kept talking. “We need to keep cool heads here. Deanna’s not sure what she saw, exactly.”

“Who’s that?” Deanna sniffed, pointing down the street.

It was the Jorgensens, dressed in dark jeans and white shirts. The hard soles of Sonia’s sandals smacked the asphalt. “Is everyone okay?” she called.

“Sonia! It was horrible, you wouldn’t believe—” Deanna began.

“So horrible,” Myriam echoed, as if she had been on the trail, too, taking a lap in her evening gown.

Tim Jorgensen shook hands with Victor and Phil and nodded at me. Deanna repeated her story, trembling when she got to the glowing eyes.

Doug was back, sliding his cell phone into his pocket. “They’re going to send out some kind of wild animal team in the morning.”

“In the morning!” Myriam scoffed. “What good will that do?”

“I don’t suppose there’s much they can do out there in the middle of the night,” Doug said. “And we hardly want them driving out on the golf course.”

Tim looked shocked. “No, of course not. They could do a lot of damage out there.”

“But we need to let people know,” Deanna protested. “I mean, think of all the people who jog first thing in the morning. The Browerses, for one. Sometimes Daisy’s out there, too. And then there’s the Berglands, with all those kids. You don’t think a mountain lion could hop one of those fences along the course, do you?”

“I don’t see why not,” Victor said. He clapped Phil on the shoulder. “What do you say, mate? I’ve got a handgun. If you give me a minute to change out of this monkey suit, we could head out there in my cart and chase down some mountain lions.”

I could feel Phil’s annoyance. He hated the Crocodile Dundee act, the assumption that all Australians were swashbuckling men in dungarees and a hat rimmed with jagged teeth. “Let’s keep a cool head here,” he repeated.

“But we want to be sure,” Victor said. “It’s about keeping our women safe, right?”

“A handgun, Victor? You’re not serious.” Myriam shook her head. “And I don’t think the cart is charged, even. When’s the last time you went golfing?”

“Rich has a .22,” Deanna offered. “He’s in the city tonight, but you could take it. And I know our cart is charged. Mac was on it earlier today. He’s too lazy to walk anywhere.”

“We could make some phone calls,” Myriam said. “I have the HOA directory.”

“What do you say?” Victor said. “Give me ten minutes?”

Phil’s eyes met mine, a swift glance that told me everything he was thinking—that this was a ridiculous idea and these were ridiculous people, but it was his job to cater to them even at their most ridiculous. He nodded slowly. “Okay, then. We’ll just take a look around. But watch that trigger finger, Victor.”

Victor guffawed, slapping him on the shoulder. Myriam picked her way back to the car in her heels, and a moment later their sedan passed us, the taillights winking around the curve and disappearing. “Well, good night, all,” Doug called over his shoulder.

“Mom?”

I whirled around. Danielle was on the lawn, dressed in the cargo shorts and T-shirt she’d been wearing earlier that day. Again, it took me a moment to recognize this version of her, the adult version with the cropped hair. Kelsey was behind her on the lawn, barefoot in her baby-doll dress. One of her spaghetti straps trailed down her arm.

“Did you get your hair cut?” Deanna squealed, her previous terror forgotten.

Danielle came forward, grinning, and Deanna ruffled fingers through her hair, first mussing it and then rearranging it before pronouncing it “smashing.”

“Kelsey, come on,” Tim said. “You’re walking home with us.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a mountain lion out there, and I don’t want you walking home by yourself. That’s why.”

Kelsey dropped her sandals to the ground one by one and wiggled her feet into them.

“Faster,” Tim barked.

“We have things to do, Kelsey,” Sonia warned.

I watched as the three of them set off down the street, Kelsey trudging ten feet behind, as if she weren’t part of their group. I felt sorry for her, understanding suddenly why she preferred to be at our house.

“Doesn’t she look so grown up now?” Deanna was cooing. “You’ll have to beat off the boys with a stick.”

Danielle blushed.

Phil had loosened up a bit, maybe accepting the reality of the night ride with Victor. “Believe me, I have a big stick at the ready,” he said. There was a moment of embarrassed silence. “That came out wrong. I meant—”

But it was too late. Deanna had doubled over, laughing. “I bet you do. I bet you do...”

* * *

Later, I grabbed a broom and dustpan from the outdoor utility closet and swept up the remnants of my broken wineglass. Nothing bounded past me in the backyard, nothing bared its teeth, but I didn’t take any chances. It may have been nothing—I wouldn’t have put it past Deanna to exaggerate a house cat into a mountain lion—but I felt uneasy on our patio, as if I were being watched.

Upstairs, I puzzled over the mess on the floor of the master suite—jeans and skirts and complicated, sparkly tops—before remembering that Danielle and Kelsey had used the room for its full-length mirror. I scooped up the clothes and tossed them onto the floor of Danielle’s room. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, thumbs tapping her phone’s keypad.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I forgot about those.”

“I’m not your maid,” I said, kicking at the clothes I’d just dropped, which already blended in with the other clothes on the floor.

She looked up. “I never said you were my maid.”

“Well, this place is a mess,” I said, stalking through the room. “Half of these clothes are Kelsey’s, and there are wet beach towels...”

“I know. I’m going to clean it up, don’t worry.”

I nudged a pair of shoes to the side of the room with my bare foot. “Tonight, before you go to bed.”

“It’s almost eleven o’clock. I’ll do it in the morning.”

“Tonight,” I repeated, and something in my tone caused Danielle to finally put her phone down.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, bewildered. “Are you mad at me for something? Is it still the haircut?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. Everything, suddenly, felt wrong. Things were feeling more and more wrong from one moment to the next. “Just do what I said,” I told her—that parental cop-out, that all-purpose directive I’d hated when my parents used it on me.

I ran a bath and soaked in it, lights out, until the water ran cold. What was wrong with me? I closed my eyes, but I could still picture Phil’s hand on Deanna’s shoulder, the slow circling of his thumb. I wondered if there was a way I could turn it around, make a joke out of it. Poor Deanna. Thank goodness she had you to comfort her. No—it wasn’t even funny. Besides, Phil would be annoyed about his ride with Victor; he would be grumpy when he came upstairs. I waited until my skin was wrinkled and soft before toweling off and sliding, still damp, into my pajamas. I tossed the pile of throw pillows out of the way—a silly splurge, since neither of us could be bothered to make the bed properly in the morning—and that’s when I saw it: a tiny black strip of fabric, tucked along the bed skirt on Phil’s side. I stared at it for a long time before touching it with my toe, spreading it out to see what it was.

A thong.

Not mine. Not Danielle’s—unless she’d spent her back-to-school money on silky black underwear.

There was a brief, horrible moment where I could picture Deanna Sievert in our bedroom, shedding one thin layer, then another. It was possible, of course—Danielle and I had been out of the house, and Rich had been out of town. And then I laughed out loud, shocked at how easily that image came to mind.

Of course not.

The thong was Kelsey’s—she’d been changing clothes in here; she was exactly the sort of teenager who wore a black silk thong. Why she felt the need to strip down altogether when trying on a few skirts, I had no idea.

I shook my head, remembering her standing on the front lawn in her short baby-doll dress, then casually following her parents down the street, apparently au natural. Apparently not worried about sudden gusts of wind.

I thought about flinging the underwear into Danielle’s room, one more item for her to clean off the floor. She would express disgust, and I would say, “Tell Kelsey to keep her panties on next time.” But it wasn’t worth the mention. Instead, I pinched the thong between two fingers and airlifted it to the wastebasket in the bathroom, where I shoved it deep beneath crumpled tissues and an empty bottle of shampoo.

PHIL

I didn’t say anything to Liz about Kelsey in the beginning, and then suddenly, it was too late. Liz was already suspicious of Deanna, who had nothing better to do than chat for half an hour here, an hour there. I could have said something about Kelsey, but it would have been more grist for the mill, more fodder for Liz’s jokes about The Palms. And that was when it was a mindless flirtation, a situation that I figured would blow over and be gone, like a bit of dandelion fluff.

Later, mentioning it would have given it too much weight in our lives. Even saying her name would have been dropping clues about an affair I wasn’t having. I tried it out in my head, worked on the phrasing. There’s this girl who has a bit of a fixation on me. It’s probably just a little crush. I haven’t done anything—much—to encourage it. It’s nothing. But it wouldn’t be nothing to Liz. She wouldn’t have been able to let it go. I knew how she was, how at her core was a kernel of insecurity, dormant until we’d moved to The Palms. She’d never been especially concerned with her own appearance before. She’d never obsessed about exercise. Her wardrobe had been a steady rotation of black pants and button-down shirts, the occasional jacket. In the mornings, every morning of our lives before moving to The Palms, she simply ran her fingers through her wet hair, added a bit of lip gloss, and was ready to go.

I’d loved that about her.